Gamehelpmahjong

General goal

The game is played with a set of 144 tiles (136 without the flowers and seasons option) based on Chinese characters and symbols. Each player begins by receiving 13 tiles. In turn players draw in the Great Wall and discard tiles on the Celestial Empire until they complete a legal hand using the 14th drawn tile to form four melds and a pair. A player can also win with a small class of limit hands. The Sacred Hill is a dead wall: 14 tiles only available to compensate Kong or bonus tiles.

Tiles

The tiles are split into three categories: simples, honors, and bonus tiles.

• There are three suits of simples and in each suit the tiles are numbered from 1 to 9. The suits are bamboos, dots, and characters. There are four identical copies of each simples tile totaling 108 simples tiles
• There are two different sets of Honors tiles: Winds and Dragons. The Winds are East, South, West, and North. In Mahjong, East (not North) is the beginning. The Dragons are Red, Green, and White. The white dragon has a blue frame on the face of the piece. These tiles have no numerical sequence like the simples (for example the bamboo pieces number 1 to 9). Like the simples, there are four identical copies of each Honors tile, for a total of 28 Honors tiles.
• Option "Flowers and seasons": There are two sets of Bonus tiles: Flowers and Seasons. The flower and season tiles play a unique role in the mechanics of the game. When drawn, the Bonus tile is not added into a player's hand but are instead set aside and kept near the player's other tiles for scoring purposes should they win the hand, and an extra tile is drawn in replacement of the Bonus tile. In addition, unlike the Simple and Honors tiles, there is only a single tile of each Bonus tile, so there are a total of four flower and four season tiles in the set.

Melds

Melds are groups of tiles within the player's hand, consisting of either:

• a Pong: three identical tiles
• a Kong: four identical tiles
• a Chow: three Simple tiles all of the same suit, in numerical sequence
• a Pair: two identical tiles needed in a winning hand

A meld is concealed when every one of its tiles was drawn by you from the wall. It is exposed when any of its tiles was claimed from another player's discard.

If you hold three identical tiles and draw the fourth, you can declare a concealed Kong: you lay it on the table and draw a replacement tile. It still counts as concealed. If you add a drawn tile to an exposed Pong, the Kong is exposed.

Four identical tiles kept in your hand without declaring a Kong count as a Pong, not a Kong.

When you go Mahjong on a discard, the meld or pair that discard completes counts as exposed.

Claim a tile

There are rules governing which player has priority to claim from a discard.
Going Mahjong > Kong > Pong > Chow*

• A player can steal a discard to form a Chow only from the player whose turn was immediately before theirs.
  

You cannot claim for a Pair excepted for going Mahjong
The player who steals a tile gets the hand, has to discard, and play continues with the player after them.

Limit hands

A limit hand scores its value below and nothing else: no flowers, seasons or other bonuses, and the points limit doesn't apply to it. Only East's double payment still applies.

Hand	Tiles	Value
Seven Pairs	Seven pairs of any tiles, fully concealed	500
Nine Gates	1112345678999 in one suit, plus any other tile of that suit, fully concealed	700
Ruby Dragon	A Pong or Kong of Red Dragons, three Pongs or Kongs of Characters, and a pair of Characters	1300
Jade Dragon	A Pong or Kong of Green Dragons, three Pongs or Kongs of Bamboo, and a pair of Bamboo	1300
Opal Dragon	A Pong or Kong of White Dragons, three Pongs or Kongs of Dots, and a pair of Dots	1300
All Terminals	Only 1s and 9s	1600
All Kongs	Four Kongs and a pair	1600
Thirteen Orphans	One 1 and one 9 of each suit, one of each Wind and one of each Dragon, plus one more of any of these	1600
Big Three Dragons	A Pong or Kong of each Dragon, any other meld and a pair	2000
Big Four Winds	A Pong or Kong of each Wind, and a pair of anything	2000

If your tiles also make a regular hand worth more, you score the regular hand: you always get the better of the two. For example, 11 22 33 44 55 66 77 of one suit, with the last tile drawn from the wall, is Seven Pairs (500). It is also four Chows (123 123 456 456) and a pair: (20 + 2 + 10) × 2⁴ = 512, so it scores 512.

Basics Rules Scoring

Your score is your points multiplied by 2 for each double: points × 2 × 2 × ... Every bonus your hand qualifies for counts, unless a rule below says "instead of".

Points

E = exposed, C = concealed. Kongs have their own points in this table. Everywhere else on this page, a Kong counts as a Pong.

Meld	E	C
Chow	0	0
Pong of 2 to 8	2	4
Pong of 1s, 9s or Winds	4	8
Pong of Dragons	4	8
Kong of 2 to 8	8	16
Kong of 1s, 9s or Winds	16	32
Kong of Dragons	16	32
Pair of your seat Wind	2	2
Pair of the prevalent Wind (rolled with the dice each hand)	2	2
Pair of the round Wind (East in the first round, South in the second, and so on)	0	2
Pair of Dragons	0	2

A pair of Winds scores for every kind of Wind it is. For example, if you sit South and South is also the prevalent Wind, a pair of South scores 2 + 2 = 4.

Bonus	Points
Each flower or season	4

For the winner only:

Bonus	Points
Going Mahjong	20
Mahjong drawn from the wall	2
Mahjong with four Chows and a pair	10
Little Three Dragons: Pongs or Kongs of two Dragons and a pair of the third	64
Little Four Winds: Pongs or Kongs of three Winds and a pair of the fourth	64
Four concealed Pongs: four concealed Pongs or Kongs. A discard may only complete the pair.	64

Doubles

Each of these doubles the score.

Melds and bonus tiles (for every player):

• Pong or Kong of your seat Wind
• Pong or Kong of the prevalent Wind
• Pong or Kong of the round Wind
• Pong or Kong of Dragons
• Your own flower or season
• All 4 flowers
• All 4 seasons

A Pong of a Wind gets one double for every kind of Wind it is. For example, East's Pong of East, when East is also the prevalent and round Wind, gets 3 doubles.

Mahjong (for the winner only):

Condition	Doubles
Without Chow	1
Fully concealed	1
One suit, no Winds or Dragons	3
One suit with Winds or Dragons	1
Only 1s, 9s, Winds and Dragons	1
Only Winds and Dragons	3
Robbing the Kong (going Mahjong on the tile another player adds to an exposed Pong)	1
On a Kong replacement tile (instead of the 2 points for drawing from the wall)	1
"Plucking the Moon from the Bottom of the Sea": on the last tile of the wall. The 2 points for drawing from the wall count too.	1
On the last discard: the discard made after the last tile of the wall was drawn	1

These add up. For example, a hand of only Winds and Dragons is also "only 1s, 9s, Winds and Dragons" and "without Chow", so it gets 3 + 1 + 1 = 5 doubles.

Limit

With the "Limits points for regular Mahjong" option set to 1000 points (the default), a hand scores at most 1000. This applies to every player's hand, winners and losers. Limit hands aren't affected. With "no limit", regular hands have no maximum, so a big regular hand can score more than a limit hand.

Example

You sit South. The prevalent Wind is West and the round Wind is East. You go Mahjong by drawing from the wall with:

• a concealed Pong of Red Dragons: 8
• an exposed Pong of 9 Dots: 4
• two Chows: 0
• a pair of South (your seat Wind): 2
• one flower that isn't yours: 4

Points: 8 + 4 + 2 + 4 + 20 (Mahjong) + 2 (from the wall) = 40. Doubles: the Dragon Pong, 1. Score: 40 × 2 = 80.

Payments

Every player scores their hand, losers too, but only the winner gets the Mahjong points and doubles.

• Each loser pays the winner the winner's score.
• Losers pay each other the difference between their scores.
• The winner pays nobody, unless the "Mahjong pays higher score" option is on. Then the winner pays twice the difference to each loser with a higher score.

East wind exception
East wind doubles its gains and losses.
With "Mahjong pays higher score" on, the winner pays East, or is paid by East, 4 times the difference instead of 2.